Space shuttle to launch another day

The space shuttles do not seem to want to go gentle into that good night. Just hours before the shuttle Endeavour was scheduled to lift off on the second-to-last shuttle mission ever, a problem with its heaters forced NASA to postpone the launch for at least three days.

NASA launch director Mike Leinbach called off Friday's launch, scheduled for 2047 GMT, after heaters inside the shuttle stopped working. The heaters keep hydrazine fuel – used to power the movement of the shuttle's wing flaps and landing gear – from freezing.

NASA said it would take at least 72 hours to investigate and fix the problem, which could be related to short-circuited wires.

When it does launch, Endeavour will deliver a massive cosmic ray detector called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station.

This mission has received widespread media attention not only because it is the penultimate flight before the 30-year-old shuttles are retired later this year, but because its commander, Mark Kelly, is married to US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who is recovering from an assassination attempt in January. Giffords, along with President Barack Obama and his family, were going to watch the launch from Florida.

This image shows a storm near the shuttle's launch site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday (Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

What question would you ask the Endeavour astronauts? YouTube and PBS plan to pose questions from the public to the astronauts while they are in orbit.

Unclear. Is this the end of th space shuttle program for good? Or just the end of the Endeavour?

Bod
on April 30, 2011 9:30 AM

What makes space-flight at least an order of magnitude more expensive and complicated than say air-travel?

For instance:

# A commercial jet may cost about £100M and a spacecraft over a billion and it may have millions of moving parts.

# A plane goes at 880km/h with a third of an atmosphere outside at a height of 13km. The shuttle does 28000km/h with practically zero atmosphere at a height of 320km. Is there much difference in the structural requirements for the airframe then (not figuring take-off stresses).

# A plane may have 200 tonnes of fuel on board to fly 7000km. A shuttle will take off vertically with I think 1000 tonnes of fuel to coast millions of km in space.

# A plane will generally fly in most weather and cope with turbulence. A shuttle has to cope with take-off and re-entry but is somewhat temperamental with the weather.

# Most systems are go when a plane takes off. The shuttle is subject to all kinds of delays from a multitude of sub-systems. Is it over or under-engineered or just about right? What does that bode for making space simpler and cheaper?

Dirk Pons
on April 30, 2011 10:51 AM

Hydrazine is a toxic material, and the reconditioning of these thrusters is one of several reasons why the Shuttles never lived up to the promise of rapid redeployment in the first place. And now the last place too.